ScottHall

Love this concept. Lot of my interaction on this forum was inspired by Andy Kaufman's run in Memphis.

Go get 'em tiger.

WAAAAYFAIR YOU'VE GOT JUST WHAT I NEED Um but seriously IDK. Cool real estate ops out there but haven't seen a lot of 100x yet... Been very lazy this sell off... only put a little dry powder to work. May miss out. We'll see. Oh well!

<3

I still do value investments but my style has shifted towards growth over the past five years. Giving value investors grief fun, but the style can and does work in some circumstances. It's just that most of its practitioners are not skilled at the art, which is unsurprising given the wide array of Xeroxes of Xeroxes that are easily read about the subject. It encourages amateurs who don't know what they're doing, which is valuable in that it gets more people into investing, but unfortunate because a lot of people let those early learnings stunt their growth. Nevertheless, value can be a successful style and my view is that its core concepts make sense as a base to add upon, rather than being the whole strategy by itself. Its principles make sense, but it's important to build on top of them and figure out where the heuristics of old are no longer so useful. The big problem with value investing is that many of its practitioners are essentially cultists who refuse to even try to adapt their style. It makes them intellectually lazy and, surprise surprise, they end up underperforming because of it. I've found a lot of value in creating my own style of investing. It's an endeavor worth pursuing, because it's harder to have unique insights if you copy & paste from the same sources as everyone else. Congratulations on your success with growth investing, it's an admirable achievement to improve your style by trying new concepts.

If reason doesn't work, try emotion.

I don't get the bad reaction to alwaysdrawing. I agree with a lot of the points brought up, and think people are being too harsh. I don't see anything offensive about that contra view of Berkshire, part of which is similar to what I've expressed in the past. Berkshire is a great company but I'm not sure it's a great investment anymore, either, and sold my shares after the tax reform run-up. I might buy them back at some point because a lot of its businesses are "old reliable" and there is a place for that in a portfolio, but for me, doubtful to be a "core holding" on account of I like stuff that's a bit higher octane than Berkshire but with much better growth profiles. I see Berkshire as an occasional "role player" for my "team" of stocks, but not something I would build my franchise around. I could see it playing a bigger role for others, though, depending on their risk tolerance and what they're trying to do. One thing that I don't think a lot of investors appreciate is what sort of role a stock will play in their portfolios. Are its traits complementary to the stocks you already have or does adding it weaken the portfolio even if the stock itself is seemingly underpriced. It's something I have been thinking about more lately. I own Markel for similar reasons, it adds value for me because it's not another Google or Amazon or Facebook.

Put it all on red SPY same month calls. YOLO! 8) Seriously, IRL I'd probably do nothing. Even with special situations, there is no guarantee they'd work out in a month and they likely won't be big enough to put in $1B. The best trade would be one where you are likely make a little, but have a tail risk of losing a lot. I think this can be structured by selling out of the money calls and puts simultaneously (forgot how this is called). The thinking is that even make a little percentagewise with a high likelihood is worth quite a bit with this huge sum and blowing up with $1B is somebody else’s problem. This, IMO.

Poor Oroville; they are now saying that bankruptcy could be as soon as two years away! I hope there isn't a market crash because it could get really, really ugly in a lot of places. http://www.actionnewsnow.com/content/news/Oroville-Takes-New-Preventative-Measures-to-Avoid-Bankruptcy-in-Near-Future-480190303.html

3rd order effect: China, understanding the strategic importance of long term investment, picks up the slack, allowing it the distinction of being able to helicopter into developing countries with new medical discoveries it can give away to extend and cement its soft power in countries that are going to be relevant in geopolitics 20 - 30 years from now. We're in checkmate here folks, we just haven't figured that out yet. We got fat and lazy while the Chinese have been working to throw us off the high horse. It reminds me of the intro to Rocky 3, where we see that Rocky has lost himself to the glitz and glamour of his fame. TV commercials, magazine photoshoots, the "perfect" family Christmas and his face on merchandise everywhile Meanwhile we are introduced to Clubber Lang, a young fighter making his way up the rankings. We see him brutally knock out his opponents while Rocky is beating up a bunch of palookas we later discover were set up as tomato cans for Rocky to squash by his manager Mickey. And while we see Clubber Lang dedicate all of his time to improving himself to better his chances at his chosen profession, we see Rocky making appearances on The Muppet Show and shilling for American Express. Rocky had grown soft and the Rocky brand was more valuable with him beating up tomato cans than risking his title against legitimate competition. But sooner or later, if you don't take the fight to your competition, your competition will take the fight to you. Rocky couldn't duck Clubber Lang forever, and when he eventually did fight Clubber Lang he discovered that his match ups with the palookas hadn't prepared him to face real competition again. Ever since the Cold War ended, we've been like Rocky. We've been resting on our laurels and beating up palooka countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, while China has been investing in its domestic infrastructure, building up its soft power around the world and rising up the rankings. The day is coming soon that the US will get knocked out cold and be unable to answer the 10 count, and it's our own fault for letting our country fall apart. All that wasted money for wars could have been used to reinvest in America and make us more competitive, but I guess reinvesting in your economic moat is a tough sell when many people believe American Exceptionalism alone has imbued us with our gifts, and that philosophy has made us arrogant and lazy. We're in checkmate; when you're in checkmate, how can you win? You've already lost, and you can't win a game that you've lost. At least, not conventionally. But there is another alternative, famous in Go clubs around Asia... The Nuclear Tesuji. You flip over the board and the pieces go flying everywhere. It's total chaos, and the usual rules and expectations no longer apply because we're no longer playing the same game. China has been besting by building up their strategically important infrastructure. It's time we do the same, by issuing trillions of dollars worth of bonds to build up our own domestic infrastructure to catch up with China. And we need to do this while we still have Donald Trump in office, because he is uniquely qualified to deal with the next step of the operation. Being the first of the major powers of the world to default on its obligations to the others. Donald Trump has had six business bankruptcies so far, that is not an easy skill to hire for. And dare I say it's one we've NEVER had in the oval office before. We are going to build up our own domestic infrastructure with the money of foreign governments, and leave them holding the bag. It's Economic Judo, and it's something Trump is very familiar of pulling on his creditors. He can do the same thing for ours, but first we need to build as big of a foreign debt as possible. The more money we borrow, the more we make up for our cumulative trade deficit to these countries since free trade became the flavor of the day. We'll have had the benefit of decades of lower prices and we'll get the last laugh by pulling back all the money that has been sucked out of the pockets of American families by free trade with our Nuclear Tesuji. ScottHall for Secretary of State! ... at the very least: ScottHall for Anthony Scaramucci! 8) Thanks Jurgis. Stay tuned, because I have a lot to say on the matter of financial responsibility and how we should really be treating our multi-trillion unfunded liabilities. According to Stanford, here in CA we could be facing $1 trillion ALONE through our pension system. But the state is saying $150 billion unfunded, but guess what, they are also saying 7% returns from their pension system going forward. They haven't come even close, on average, over the past decade. And if those mediocre returns keep up, well, the numbers get really big, really quick. It is going to take some major financial ingenuity to solve these massive obligations we have made to ourselves. I voted John Chiang for Governor because he has been Treasurer or Controller since 2007, finding one rabbit after the other to pull out of the hat to keep us going. That is the sort of guy we are going to need to navigate the pension crisis. Oroville says the city is going to run out of money in 4 years, and then bankruptcy. Most cities in the state are in the hole big time, many thousands of dollars per resident. Too bad he is going to lose, nobody loves a technocrat anymore. Then we are going to be stuck with Gavin Newsom, who is a showboat, and most likely this guy John Cox who has campaigned for office 13 times and hasn't won a single one of them. John Cox has views that just cannot win in modern CA, and he has been turning the election into a base race so that he can coalesce support among conservatives to make it out of California's jungle primary alive. In CA, everyone running gets places in one giant pool of candidates. No separation by party. The top two vote getters in that pool then go on to the general election. It doesn't matter if it's a Republican and a Democrat, two Democrats, two Republicans, or even third parties/independents. So naturally this has led to the Republicans running to try to out Trump each other to be the one the conservative wing rallies behind and make it out of the jungle alive. Unfortunately, running a base race in a state where Republicans have 25% and Democrats have 44% is a sure way to lose a general election. So Goofy Gavin is going to be Governor, and this whole charade continues another four or so years... and then maybe the state turns into Newsom's Nightmare and he takes the blame for being the one holding the potato when the music stops. Maybe then the local Republicans will have their shit enough together to capitalize on the fallout and win the Governor's mansion for the first time since Schwarzenegger. Or maybe Gavin will just get replaced by another Democrat in the jungle primary and the Republican party stays as irrelevant as ever because of their refusal to budge on social issues. But one thing is for sure, we need someone with some financial sense running the state. They're bragging now about the $10 billion budget surplus but that surplus is going to be a drop in the bucket compared to what they need if the worst comes to pass. Or, god forbid, a recession comes and whacks the market and the pension's % funded status along with it.

3rd order effect: China, understanding the strategic importance of long term investment, picks up the slack, allowing it the distinction of being able to helicopter into developing countries with new medical discoveries it can give away to extend and cement its soft power in countries that are going to be relevant in geopolitics 20 - 30 years from now. We're in checkmate here folks, we just haven't figured that out yet. We got fat and lazy while the Chinese have been working to throw us off the high horse. It reminds me of the intro to Rocky 3, where we see that Rocky has lost himself to the glitz and glamour of his fame. TV commercials, magazine photoshoots, the "perfect" family Christmas and his face on merchandise everywhere. Meanwhile we are introduced to Clubber Lang, a young fighter making his way up the rankings. We see him brutally knock out his opponents while Rocky is beating up a bunch of palookas we later discover were set up as tomato cans for Rocky to squash by his manager Mickey. And while we see Clubber Lang dedicate all of his time to improving himself to better his chances at his chosen profession, we see Rocky making appearances on The Muppet Show and shilling for American Express. Rocky had grown soft and the Rocky brand was more valuable with him beating up tomato cans than risking his title against legitimate competition. But sooner or later, if you don't take the fight to your competition, your competition will take the fight to you. Rocky couldn't duck Clubber Lang forever, and when he eventually did fight Clubber Lang he discovered that his match ups with the palookas hadn't prepared him to face real competition again. Ever since the Cold War ended, we've been like Rocky. We've been resting on our laurels and beating up palooka countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, while China has been investing in its domestic infrastructure, building up its soft power around the world and rising up the rankings. The day is coming soon that the US will get knocked out cold and be unable to answer the 10 count, and it's our own fault for letting our country fall apart. All that wasted money for wars could have been used to reinvest in America and make us more competitive, but I guess reinvesting in your economic moat is a tough sell when many people believe American Exceptionalism alone has imbued us with our gifts, and that philosophy has made us arrogant and lazy. We're in checkmate; when you're in checkmate, how can you win? You've already lost, and you can't win a game that you've lost. At least, not conventionally. But there is another alternative, famous in Go clubs around Asia... The Nuclear Tesuji. You flip over the board and the pieces go flying everywhere. It's total chaos, and the usual rules and expectations no longer apply because we're no longer playing the same game. China has been besting us by building up their strategically important infrastructure. It's time we do the same, by issuing trillions of dollars worth of bonds to build up our own domestic infrastructure to catch up with China. And we need to do this while we still have Donald Trump in office, because he is uniquely qualified to deal with the next step of the operation. Being the first of the major powers of the world to default on its obligations to the others. Donald Trump has had six business bankruptcies so far, that is not an easy skill to hire for. And dare I say it's one we've NEVER had in the oval office before. We are going to build up our own domestic infrastructure with the money of foreign governments, and leave them holding the bag. It's Economic Judo, and it's something Trump is very familiar of pulling on his creditors. He can do the same thing for ours, but first we need to build as big of a foreign debt as possible. The more money we borrow, the more we make up for our cumulative trade deficit to these countries since free trade became the flavor of the day. We'll have had the benefit of decades of lower prices and we'll get the last laugh by pulling back all the money that has been sucked out of the pockets of American families by free trade with our Nuclear Tesuji.

Maybe there's hope for the old GOAT after all.

Margin of Safety is basically just an $800 copy of You Can Be A Stock Market Genius IMO. Both books cover a lot of the same sort of material, but I thought Greenblatt's was better. I enjoyed all the case studies. MoS is not bad necessarily. But there's not a lot of "new" in there to justify the price if you already have had a broad exposure to value philosophy.

It's not specifically for self marketing, but I recommend reading Tested Advertising Methods for marketing generally.

My #1 advice for learning to beat the market is diversification. I have >30 stocks and am up ~19% so far this year. There are risk benefits to diversification but also second order benefits. One of the biggest second order benefits is that because of wide diversification, it's not such a big deal if one or two of them blow up, allowing you to do more research and development positions. When I buy, I seldom ever put even 15% into any one stock. When I do it has to be an obvious winner for me. Most of my allocations are single digit. The reason why I like this style, as opposed to the concentrated style I used to employ, is that I kind of want one or two of them to blow up. I know that sounds strange, but I have found value in it. Every year I allocate a small amount of the portfolio to R&D investments in new styles I am not as familiar with. The idea is that by entering fields I don't know a lot about, I will probably take some beatings, but I will gain a lot of general knowledge too. And by doing so I may pick up insights to improve my investing style. This is how I finally got over my aversion to growth investing, starting with a very small investment in Amazon. From there it became a spiral and I have GOOG, FB and so many other growth stocks. They've been big winners for my portfolio. It's harder to do R&D positions when you're putting your whole stack on the line on a handful of securities. You get more exposure to your best ideas that way, certainly, but at some cost of internal development that may prevent you from expanding your universe of "best ideas." For those playing the long game, I like the diversification strategy. Over time I want to build as big of an investable universe for myself as possible, and so much of that comes down to exposure.

Scott, here’s a tough question. What has been in your portfolio (key contributors) over say the past 15 years? I think it’s important to include the last downturn because if not for the good fortune of government bailouts and FedReserve market meddling portfolio design and cash on hand matters most in downturns. As for Gods. If I knew God existed and that it created the universe, I think I’d worship it even if it hadn’t done much since. Well, I didn't start investing until age 16 so I can't give you a 15 year view. Early on I was heavy into value, I started investing in early 2007, heading into the crash. I was running a concentrated portfolio and actually ended up making it through totally unscathed - and made quite a bit of money. My big investment at the time was GGP, the profits of which I used to finance a trip to England. Then my next big investment was Samson Oil & Gas, which was a triple in about a year. I sold it, fortunately, as now it trades for pennies a share. I got hired at a company then and my views about investing drastically shifted once I did. I moved to diversification and also a heavier growth component of the portfolio, with longer holding periods. That's where I'm at now. I recently took a massive gain on FB but am back in now based on board member rec. My current largest percentage winners are AMZN, W, FSBW, MKL, NVR, MAR, CAOX. I have 33 stocks; the 16th best one is LSXMK which is up 40%. My worst stock right now is PDER, down 17% from purchase (but a lot more considering opportunity cost). Hope that helps.

I agree with you 100%, Reader. And you're welcome. :)

I don't care if anyone knows I smoke pot. John Hjorth asked me not to post about it here, so I stopped, and then he decided to bring it up anyway. It's not about my use of pot; I'm very proud of that, and have written about it extensively. But when you ask me to stop bringing it up, and I do, and then you start bringing it up yourself, that means you're now the instigator and have no room to speak. I hope John doesn't mind if I start posting about weed every week again, since he likes to talk about marijuana now. The way I see it nobody can stop you from posting income anything - well except Sanjeev but he's pretty liberal in that way. What I would say is that you should try to post your best. Post if you have something to add. If you try to do that i don't think that John's opinion should have anything to do with it. Maybe whether you or him bring pot up should be something you guys hash out privately. But honestly, you can post your insights about pot and I just don't give a shit. So I just overlook anything you say. I simply don't care for that information. So you have a choice. You can be a troll, and I don't think anyone will stop you from that and lots of people will just ignore you. Or you could try to post your best and be considered a valued contributor. Now, maybe you've turned a page - some of your recent post don't feel that trolly. But it takes time to rebuild a reputation. Sins of of the past are called that for a reason. You can't just say that you've turned a page and everyone should move along and shut up. I never said anything about not "trolling." That is one of my biggest value adds here, whether you believe it or not. My use of copywriting helped inspire one person to leave their job and start their own business, because they believed they could make use of the same techniques I was showing off in order to improve their life. Many seem to assume I post these things malevolently rather than out of a sense of comedy and humor, and to help people learn about techniques that are being used on them literally every day without even realizing it. A lot of conservative political operatives started in my little subdomain, so anyone in the U.S. is exposed to a more sinister version of this on a daily basis. Many just don't realize it. In some ways the modern conservative movement was built on such techniques. You have to read a lot of my posts with second order thinking in mind to truly grasp them. Book rec about the topic above: https://www.amazon.com/Americas-Right-Turn-Conservatives-Alternative/dp/1566252520 I've laid out the roadmap on here several times, and I get PMs and e-mails all the time from people who have read them and are taking the teachings to heart. It's okay if you're not one of them or if you don't get it. Not everyone has to like it, but my posts have helped create real, tangible value for forum members who bother to look beyond the veil. If you can't get past those biases, that's up to you. But it probably will make you more likely to miss my obvious winners like CAOX at $1k, because of underestimation. So far that has proved to be the reader's loss, not the author's. Maybe John is right and that won't be the case going forward, who is to say. But so far so good. I will hazard a guess and say that I have a different view of what best is than most of you, probably because of my background. It's very unusual. My grandma was a witch and she raised me while my mom went to school, so I lived in a mountain town of 500 people. I dropped out of the fourth grade there and later talked myself into a job that I ended up leaving after 4 or 5 years because of severe depression with regard to my gender dysphoria. I now work in marketing and replace that income by working fewer days per year, because of my copywriting ability. The point of writing copy is to write in a way that incites response, rather than writing as a way to convey pure, unadulterated information. It's in the name DRM - Direct Response Marketing. This usually means using lots of colloquialisms and writing in a very visual way. It's a different style of writing compared to what most people are used to, and it does have a lot in common with the more harmless varieties of internet "trolling." Basically because to a large extent, in my copywriting career, I've often ended up playing devil's advocate for ideas that were someone else's. It didn't matter what I thought of them, but I needed to be able to write about them in a sense as if they were my own. And you have to write them compellingly, because if you don't, your client is not bringing in any sales and you're not getting paid. What I have done here in the past is essentially the same thing, except I have more control over the subject matter. Sometimes they're chicken scratch ideas I'm just beginning to work on in my head for my own investing philosophy, and writing them in this way helps me think them through a bit more, and gets other people to contribute as well because the format of writing helps to excite them. Other times it's because I want to test the reaction to a certain viewpoint that I may have to incorporate in a future campaign. It's important to have practice to make sure you're hitting the mark with people who pretty closely represent your target demographic but who are miles away from who you are yourself. I don't see anything harmful or nefarious about this; use strong language to hook people in, and then serve the main course. Sometimes people will view that in a negative or villainous way because the targets might be some of their heroes, but that is helpful sometimes because that perception can serve as a lightning rod for response. In the social media age, that can be quite a valuable thing. When people open up to the idea that I'm trying to help them, they tend to learn and learn quickly. But I get that it's not for everyone. It's for some people, though, and so long as I keep hearing stories about how my posts have helped improve the lives of people who have read them, I do not intend to stop writing the way I do. I view it as my responsibility to share my knowledge with the world. If you aren't cool with that, it's fine. I'm just trying to expose this forum to a new set of what can be powerful mental models. Some have opened themselves to these ideas, others "don't get it" and just see a troll or an idiot and will just ignore me. I'm totally cool with that, too.

I don't care if anyone knows I smoke pot. John Hjorth asked me not to post about it here, so I stopped, and then he decided to bring it up anyway. It's not about my use of pot; I'm very proud of that, and have written about it extensively. But when you ask me to stop bringing it up, and I do, and then you start bringing it up yourself, that means you're now the instigator and have no room to speak. I hope John doesn't mind if I start posting about weed every week again, since he likes to talk about marijuana now.

To be totally honest, straight, bordering to being brutal here, Scott: For my part: Not. But please stop ruining your smart brain with pot, and come back. Furthermore, there seem to me to be at least some kind of correlation between you trolling here on CoBF and being under influence of pot, or whatever. If you hereby don't grasp how much damage your're causing, then, yes, you're one of the biggest idiots here on CoBF. Unprovoked you bring up my marijuana usage, which I haven't mentioned once in this thread. It's an activity you intensely dislike, supposedly. Yet here you are promoting it to thousands of users and giving me a bigger microphone than I would have otherwise had due to that attention. You're promoting personal behavior you don't approve of so that you can call me out on a message board topic you apparently felt offended by. By a brief look through my post history, at least by a quick glance, it looks like I haven't mentioned weed on this forum since around this time last year. I gave you what you wanted, out of respect kept it to my Twitter account and off the forums, and yet you still don't want to let it go. I'm sorry, but which of us is supposed to be trolling in this particular thread? Maybe changing behavior starts by looking in the mirror, John.

Scorpion has the right idea, IMO. Perhaps Buffett is just waiting for a market pullback to buy the tech stocks. If the market crashed 50% all of them would probably be screaming buys.

Yeah, then Warren gets to buy all the FANG stocks at the prices he originally should have. And I get to buy more. Not a bad idea!

More about investing being like racing, for those interested: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/berkshire-hathaway/sorry-warren!-another-year-of-dragging-ass/

Good of him to own up to this. He has cost shareholders a lot in terms of opportunity cost the past decade, hate to say it but it's true. Outside the GFC Berkshire has done nothing impressive and TBH even considering that opportunity returns have not been that impressive compared to what they should have been with the "world's greatest investor" at the helm. Munger says Buffett keeps getting better with age. I don't see it, honestly. He's still very good but I don't get the impression he or Berkshire have morphed with the times in the way that is sold. It's cool he's trying new things with Apple, maybe he'll get his old groove back sooner or later. I'd say that is a little too negative considering size, market conditions and cash position. Ask Prem Watsa about true opportunity costs... Hell, ask most decent fund managers with a strong value bent. They'll come back in vogue at some point too. Buffett was buying in 08/09 while many were trembling with fear. And he still did some decent deals like you said. That's more than most can say. Nothing mindblowing but he has still kept up with the market and its soaring tech stocks with enormous cash levels. Maybe he got better with age but certain conditions make it very hard to see this. I'd love to see what happens if the S&P500 drops two or three years in a row! Also, selecting Todd and Ted, who both seem to be beating the market, is impressive in itself imo. They are not managing a few hunderd million... So easy to say in hindsight that BRK did poor vs broader market. Maybe one of his biggest mistakes is not buying MSFT a few years back and going after IBM. (With IBM he fell prey to a backwards looking fallacy as someone else put it here. "They have always reinvented themselves thus they will do it again.") But who would have guessed Amazon, Google, Apple, Netflix, Facebook, ... would be where they are today. Five years ago, 99%+ of analysts, investors etc would have called you insane if you dared to predict this outcome. Do you know about many fund managers who got extraordinary outperformance vs the market? In any case, I would have slept better owning 100% BRK than 100% S&P500 in the last 9 years. For the last 20 years, BRK has been a great stock to own in size at certain points in time. Good investors were best to trade around that. Early 2000 and 2011/2012 were two such occasions where the investment case was a no-brainer. Many didn't see it in 2000 and 2011 and I'm sure Mr Market will be blinded once again in the future. I really don't think that's true. I and many others have made very good returns on Facebook, Amazon and Google over the past five years. I sold out of Facebook recently - I will buy back in - held it since 2014 and had 137% gain on the position. Still have AMZN and GOOG. I didn't miss these stocks and a lot of people on these forums think I'm one of the biggest idiots on here. I beat Buffett at growth investing, so did a lot of others on this forum TBH. He owns up to his mistake and there's no shame in making mistakes, but to say that 99% of people couldn't figure those stocks out seems a little silly to me.

Good of him to own up to this. He has cost shareholders a lot in terms of opportunity cost the past decade, hate to say it but it's true. Outside the GFC Berkshire has done nothing impressive and TBH even considering that opportunity returns have not been that impressive compared to what they should have been with the "world's greatest investor" at the helm. Munger says Buffett keeps getting better with age. I don't see it, honestly. He's still very good but I don't get the impression he or Berkshire have morphed with the times in the way that is sold. It's cool he's trying new things with Apple, maybe he'll get his old groove back sooner or later. I sold my Berkshire stock a while back, held it for a quick +20% on tax reform and redeployed to better opportunities. It'll probably do fine but not much more than fine, in the long run.